If recent trends continue, traffic deaths this year could dip to their lowest level in 47 years.
The lower number is because of a change in Americans' driving habits, which is fueled largely by record high gasoline prices, according to the Transportation Research Institute at the University of Michigan.
The institute's study, which covers 12 months ending in April, found that as gas prices rose, driving and fatalities declined.
The surprise, said professor Michael Sivak, author of the study, was the huge decline in fatalities in March and April as gasoline prices surged above $3.20 a gallon.
Over the previous 10 months, monthly fatalities declined an average of 4.2 percent compared with the previous year. Then, Sivak's data shows, fatalities dropped 22.1 percent in March and 17.9 percent in April of this year - numbers that did not show up in a recent federal report that tracked a drop in traffic deaths through the end of 2007.
The declines suggest that motorists reached what Sivak calls a "tipping point" and have begun significantly changing their behavior.
If the pattern continues for the rest of this year, Sivak predicts that highway deaths will drop below 37,000 for the first time since 1961.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported last week that motor vehicle deaths in the United States totaled 41,059 last year, the lowest level in a decade.
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